from the but-you're-giving-it-away-for-free dept

While ASCAP is apparently too busy to debate Larry Lessig, they aren't too busy to produce silly and ridiculous propaganda. ASCAP member Damian Sol notes that he recently received an email from ASCAP asking him to "spread the word" about ASCAP's new propaganda video that compares getting songwriters paid for music to getting chickens and cows paid for their eggs and milk. Seriously. I'd embed it here, but the technologically savvy folks at ASCAP are apparently too clueless to figure out how to include an embed on a video they claim they want people to "share." Update: Aha. While they don't make it clear on the page, the video has also been uploaded to YouTube, where it is embeddable:

Anyway, since ASCAP believes that every public performance needs to be paid for, and the idea of "free promotion" is a myth, I do have to ask: is ASCAP paying Peter Himmelman, the guy who made the video, each time it's played?

Update 2: Also, as many in the comments have noted, they've also produced a second video, which is just ridiculously misleading. You can watch it here:

Two major problems with the video. The first is that ASCAP continues to falsely portray "open source" believers as being somehow against compensation. It includes a guy in a t-shirt that says "open source dude," which morphs into "fair payment man" in the video.

The bigger problem is that it sets up a total strawman to knocks down, in saying that people don't think music is "as valuable" as a variety of tangible goods because you can hold/eat/watch those goods "and because people made them." The conclusion of the video? Music is valuable because "people made it." Uh, ok. Except that the debate isn't over the value of music. It's about the price of music, and it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that value and price are the same thing. And while some people might actually find a TV set or a pair of shoes more valuable than music, it's not because one is tangible and the other is not. It's because they simply value one more than the other. What people are actually arguing -- a point that ASCAP won't address because it can't -- is that setting up a bureaucracy that gets a government granted ability to demand money from venues promoting musicians music can actually do serious harm to musicians by making it that much more difficult to find venues that can promote their music.

Well

Not accurate

The movie doesn't even make sense.

Cows and chicken complaining about not getting a fair price for their milk and eggs - how about receiving a stable, warm hay to sit on, salt that they can't find in nature easily, protection from other predators (such as wolves, hawks and so on).

It's basically a relatively fare trade, a relation between humans and animals.

Movie should at least be appended with something saying "Join ascap and if you're big enough to sue ASCAP, you may get your fair share of money, otherwise you'll be ignored or you would get bogus, very small payments"

I like how they erase the "Open Source Dude" shirt in the "People Make It" one (about 75% of the way in) and replace it with "Fair Payment Man" before adding color. Do they really have no clue what or who their whole campaign is about? Am I the only one missing where OSS comes into this picture?

Very funny

I like how his T-Shirt goes from "Open Source Dude" to "Fair Payment Man", as if those two things are related somehow. Even how Open Source (d'oh, some people can transcribe music, so even if it gets paid for, the "source" is open) relates to music anyway is a mystery to me.

CC?

How do I know for sure I won't get into trouble for sharing this? Wouldn't it be wonderful is there was some kind of easy to use license they could publish it under so I'd know it was safe to use it...

Bunch of bull

I noticed a bull complaining about not getting paid for milk. He must represent the ASCAP execs who don't make music but expect to get paid. In fact, the bull seemed to be running the show, so he must be an exec who expects most of the royalties on the eggs and milk will be going to him because he recruited the chicken and cow.

I like how they don't even provide sensible links. There's 2 videos (the cow nonsense being the second one) at the time of this comment. The first video is extremely absurd. I want to be paid for everything I do!! It's valuable because I do it!! There's a very simple strawman here: people think music isn't as valuable as x. Nobody ever said that, AFAIK. Then there's the confusion between value and price.

Re:

False statement in video one: people says music is not valuable.
False statement in video two: people don't pay the chicken for the eggs. Ok this is not false, it's simply absurd. The analogy (people don't pay the composer for the music it composes) is only true for members of ASCAP and people who haven't figured out how to get paid.

"is ASCAP paying Peter Himmelman, the guy who made the video, each time it's played?"

Sure they will. Out of the profits from the video. You see, they produced the video by setting up a shell company. That shell company owes a lot of money to ASCAP. After that money is paid, and if there is any profit left over, I'm sure Peter will get what's coming to him.

Re: Re: Well

Updated post

Hey guys. I've updated the post with the YouTube-embeddable versions of the videos. When I wrote this, I had only seen the farm animal one, but they just added that other one too, so I added it and commented on it as well.

So I dunno if anyone else noticed, but the cow and chicken were complaining about the farm industry taking all their money. To me that sounded more like the cow and chicken (the "artists") were complaining that the people who employ/own them (the "labels") are taking all their money. Doesn't even closely resemble people taking their milk/eggs for free, it sounds like people are buying their milk/eggs and then the assholes who "employ" them are taking all the money for themselves. Way to go ASCAP, putting in a message against record labels!

Is ASCAP Revealing Its True Ambitions?

I don't know whether chickens and cows are the best analogy. Laying hens and milk cows are commonly converted into chicken soup and hamburger ('cutter'-grade beef), when their production of eggs and milk falls below a certain economically calculated threshold. In the case of chickens, it is not even an individual matter, but an average for 50,000 chickens in a single "battery cage." What can't be sold as the raw material of fast food gets sold as dog food. What can't be sold as dog food gets cooked down into fuel oil. Efficiency above all else. In human terms, that is basically the system of Auschwitz and the Gulag.

If the music industry really did own artists as chattel-slaves, they could adopt the same system. When executions were conducted in public, say until the 1860's or the 1870's in most parts of the developed countries, they were a popular spectator sport. All kinds of people made money from public executions in much the same ways they would now make money from a football game: selling seats, either in temporary bleachers, or on buildings overlooking the place of execution; selling food and drink; selling "broadsheets," one-off tabloid newspapers about the person being executed; and selling souvenirs, such as pieces of the hangman's rope. I doubt human nature has changed very much.

Re:

And then there's the totally made up reasons why people think an X is more valuable than a song: because you can do something with it, and somebody made it. WTH? Nobody says those things! It makes no sense.

Re:

That caught my attention right away. I'm sure they didn't really want to highlight how the industry (including ASCAP itself) robs the people they supposedly represent, but that was the most accurate point of the video.

I think that if I were a song writer who generally agreed with ASCAP's stated positions, I would be angry with them for such an absurdly bad effort. Since I'm not, and I don't, I'm just going to point and laugh.

playmobile

I believe that is a playmobile cow did they pay licensing fees to playmobile to use a likeness of their product in this film, some how I am guessing no. i could get confused and think that ascap sold playmobile cows then i would not buy them from playmobile and that would be illegal.

Re: Re: is this an April Fool's joke?

[citation needed]

According to Mike, an ASCAP member has received an email from ASCAP pushing these videos. "ASCAP member Damian Sol notes that he recently received an email from ASCAP asking him to 'spread the word' about ASCAP's new propaganda video that compares getting songwriters paid for music to getting chickens and cows paid for their eggs and milk."

If this is not true, then posting evidence to refute that the email Damian Sol has received as being fraudulent or invalid would be nice. Also, proof that the ASCAP website has been hacked and the videos uploaded by a 3rd Party would also work, since the videos are being served from www.ascap.com. Otherwise, it didn't happen and you sir are a moron/shill/etc.

Re: Bunch of bull

Re: Re: Re: is this an April Fool's joke?

Perhaps you should contact Peter Himmelman and Jim Hershleder and ask them how it was these two "videos" came about. It is my understanding these two created them on their own volition and later sent copies to ASCAP.

if the analogy doesn't hold, you must ....

I'm going to ignore the first video, it's just plain silly (in my opinion, feel free to have your own)

In the second video, let's follow these examples in the direction that ASCAP wants to go with music...

each time I put on my shoes and go for a walk the cobbler should get paid.
each time I use a bowl to hold my soup, the bowl maker should get paid.
each time I go for a sail in my fishing boat, the boat builders should get paid.

and why stop there,each time I wear the shoes, the designer of the shoes, bowl, boat should get paid.

Another thought ....

I read an article on the Creative commons about the Costa Rican CC draft. It seems that CC drafts and licenses are being created for every country. This could be another reason that ASCAP is having such a bird they see this spreading making their future very uncertain.